


The Hotel Key

by rhysiana



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Idek How This Got From Its Silly Country Song Origins to This Angsty Fluff Fest, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, No Events or Characterizations Post-S3 Need Apply, Sharing a Bed, but here we are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 06:50:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16656268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: “They’ve taken Argent,” Stiles said.Peter didn’t actually remember standing; he was just suddenly at the table with the rest of them. “Who has?” he asked, with exquisitely clear diction.Stiles jumped. “We don’t know yet.”“All we found was his wallet and his phone,” Scott said, tossing both onto the table.Stiles slid the phone across the table to Allison. “Unlock that. I’ll see if he managed to slip anything in here to give us a clue.” He started pulling things out of the wallet and laying them out methodically: all the expected normal life detritus… and then, from the last card slot in the wallet, jammed so far down even Stiles had trouble wriggling it out, a hotel keycard. “Maybe this means something!” He flipped it over a few times, trying to read the name of the hotel where it was nearly worn off. “Maybe it’s where they were meeting, or he tracked them there, or—”Peter plucked the card from Stiles’ fingers. “It’s not. It has nothing to do with this. The hotel it’s from isn’t even local, and it closed five years ago anyway.” He knew. He’d looked it up.





	The Hotel Key

**Author's Note:**

> Your guess is as good as mine as to how this went from hearing a lighthearted country song about a no-strings-attached hotel weekend and thinking "Oh, that'd make a fun AU" to "Chris Argent has had a really hard life, you know" and it somehow turning into angsty hurt/comfort fluff with a hint of smut, but here we are. I don't regret it. I hope none of you do either.

**Beacon Hills, now**

Scott and his ragtag pack burst through the door of Derek’s loft in a lather, much to Peter’s annoyance. His book was just coming to a climax, and Derek had been ignoring him so well Peter had been able to enjoy some of the benefits of their sad and faded familial pack bonds without actually having to engage with him. It had been… almost pleasant.

“They’ve taken Argent,” Stiles said.

Peter didn’t actually remember standing; he was just suddenly at the table with the rest of them. “Who has?” he asked, with exquisitely clear diction. He was calm. He was in control. It would be fine. Chris could handle himself.

Stiles jumped at the sound of Peter’s voice behind him, and then shot him an annoyed glare. “We don’t know yet. But he had a meet with a buyer today, and when he didn’t come back, Allison called Scott to help her track him down.”

Peter liked Stiles, normally even considered him his favorite, but would the boy never stop _talking_ and get to the _point_? “And?”

“And all we found was his wallet and his phone,” Scott said, tossing both onto the table.

Stiles slid the phone across the table to Allison. “Unlock that,” he said, opening the wallet. “I’ll see if he managed to slip anything in here to give us a clue.”

He started pulling things out of the wallet and laying them out methodically: cash and folded receipts from the billfold compartment, driver’s license, three credit cards, a bulk shopping club membership (“Need more coffee,” Stiles muttered to himself as he set that one down), the proximity card to get into his apartment building’s parking garage, a punch card from the bagel place down the street, his gun range membership ID, a fortune cookie slip that made Allison smile when she saw it and then tighten her lips again as the reality of the situation hit her all over… and then, from the last card slot in the wallet, jammed so far down even Stiles had trouble wriggling it out, a hotel keycard.

“Maybe this means something!” He flipped it over a few times, trying to read the name of the hotel where it was nearly worn off. “Maybe it’s where they were meeting, or he tracked them there, or—”

That was all Peter could take. He plucked the card from Stiles’ fingers with a brusque, “It’s not. It has nothing to do with this. The hotel it’s from isn’t even local, and it closed five years ago anyway.” He knew. He’d looked it up.

Stiles narrowed his eyes at him. “How do you know that?”

Fortunately, Peter was saved from having to answer—not that he would have—by Allison exclaiming, “Oh, I think there’s a new recording here!”

Peter flipped the keycard in his hand one last time and then slipped it into his back pocket. He couldn’t believe Chris had kept it. He shook himself mentally. This was not the time. He forced his attention back to the discussion going on around him. If they were going to get Chris back in one piece, he’d have to make sure none of the pack’s plans were too idiotic.

***

**San Diego, then**

Peter knew that back hunched over the bar. One of the arms attached to it moved, gesturing, fingers tapping the bar top in front of him for another round. Oh yes, he knew.

“Christopher Argent.” He practically purred it out, sliding onto the next stool. “What’s a nice boy like you doing in a place like this?”

Chris glared at him, which was the reaction Peter was going for except for how bloodshot it was. “Drinking, what does it look like?” His next shot was delivered and he downed it quickly, with barely even a grimace for what Peter could smell was extremely cheap tequila. “You’re usually more observant than that. Slipping, Peter?”

Peter frowned at him and then turned to catch the bartender’s eye. “How many has he had?”

“One less than I’m about to,” Chris replied, tapping his empty shot glass pointedly on the bar.

“Nope, you’re done,” Peter said, taking out his wallet and throwing down what was hopefully a truly excessive amount of cash to cover Chris’s tab before hauling Chris off his stool.

He felt Chris’s arm twitch in response, probably for a knife if Peter knew him, (he did,) and he tightened his grip around Chris’s waist. “Tsk, tsk, sweetheart,” he murmured in Chris’s ear. “No one needs to see that kind of foreplay in public. Whatever would Daddy say?”

Chris froze for a second and then let Peter steer him out of the bar.

He pushed Peter away as soon as they got outside, of course, and then narrowly missed staggering into the side of the building. “Get away from me. Why are you even here? What do you want?”

Peter held his hands up innocently. “I don’t want anything, I was just passing by.”

Chris propped himself against the wall on purpose this time, apparently to help support the weight of the glare he was directing at Peter. “Just passing by. In San Diego.”

Peter shrugged. “I was here for work. Just out looking for somewhere to eat.”

Peter could practically see the words run through his mind as Chris considered calling him out on the fact that bar was a total dive he wouldn’t normally be caught dead in and then decided to let it go.

“And you?” Peter inquired politely. “Also here on business?”

Chris grunted as he pushed himself away from the wall and took a few steps down the sidewalk. Peter caught him as he started to veer towards a light pole and continued to hold onto him firmly as he hailed a cab. It was fairly worrying that Chris barely protested when Peter shoved him in.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

There was no way Peter was leaving Chris unsupervised like this, and also no way he was taking an Argent back to his own hotel. “A hotel out by the airport. Non-chain, if you know one,” he settled on. Wherever they ended up was highly unlikely to be the place Chris was really staying.

“You got it.”

***

Peter might have been doing a good deed by taking Chris somewhere away from potential prying eyes to sleep it off, but he wasn’t a _saint_ , which was why he got a room with one king bed rather than two queens. To his great disappointment, Chris was too out of it to care by the time they got through the door.

Peter got a closer whiff of Chris as he dumped him on the bed, though, and suddenly realized what he was smelling wasn’t all from the ambience of the bar. “Christopher, are you high?”

“And drunk,” Chris said to the ceiling with his eyes closed. “Don’t forget drunk, despite your best efforts.”

Peter bent to yank off Chris’s shoes, irrationally annoyed. This was very un-Chris-like behavior. He didn’t like it. “Just color me surprised that you’d allow yourself to do something that would dull your reactions.”

This startled a bitter laugh out of Chris that went on for far longer than Peter expected. Chris pulled himself up against the pillows and wiped at his eyes when he finally got his breath back. “Oh, Peter. If you only knew. It doesn’t matter. None of this shit does. I was trained to fight while drunk, high, recently tranquilized… I’ve been on every drug you can think of, not to mention a bunch I hope you’ve never heard of, all while under the loving supervision of my father.” He produced a knife from seemingly nowhere and gestured with it tiredly. “I could kill you right now, and it would take less energy than thinking through what I’d need to do to get up and brush my teeth right now.” He let his head fall back on the pillows. “So yeah, I’m high. For all the good it’s doing me.”

Peter had no response to that. Silently, he crossed to the bathroom and filled one of the plastic cups by the sink. “Drink this,” he said flatly.

Chris accepted the water with a grimace and Peter kicked off his own shoes before settling on the other side of the bed with the TV remote. He flipped through channels, steadfastly ignoring the knife still in Chris’s hand, until he found a rerun marathon of some laughably mundane crime procedural. Chris lapsed into sleep in the flickering blue light to the low-volume murmur of a melodramatic interrogation. Peter tossed the duvet over him and sank down into his own stack of unsatisfactory pillows, frowning at the ceiling for several more hours before sleep claimed him, too.

***

Chris was still sleeping a sleep born of utter exhaustion when Peter woke again in the morning, and didn’t stir at all when Peter left the bed, so Peter left him to it and went to the bathroom to wash his face, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the wrinkled mess of clothing his reflection presented him with.

Well, it wasn’t like he had anywhere else he had to be. He stripped, took a quick shower, and then gathered his discarded clothing as he went back into the bedroom to get one of the hotel’s robes from the closet.

Chris rolled onto his side and pulled a bunched fold of the duvet up to his chest. Peter clamped down on the urge to smile. He picked up the phone instead and called the front desk.

“Yes, hello, the airlines lost my luggage, so could I get some dry-cleaning done? Wonderful. Room 523. And could you transfer me over to room service so I can place an order? Thank you.”

By the time he’d ordered two-thirds of the breakfast menu, Chris still hadn’t resurfaced. Peter weighed his options and eventually settled on the side that didn’t involve him having to deal with Chris smelling like a dive bar for the rest of however long they were here. Gently, he shook Chris’s shoulder, and then stepped to the side swiftly when the knife came at him.

“What?” Chris rasped.

“Give me your clothes.”

Chris moved the duvet further away from his face to squint at Peter in disbelief.

“I called for laundry services and they’ll be here any minute,” Peter explained with admirable patience, then snapped his fingers. “So hurry up and give me your clothes.”

“Fine, whatever,” Chris muttered, and then stripped under the covers, flinging his clothes at Peter with ill grace before rolling over and going back to sleep again.

Peter was grinning as he took the hotel laundry bag to the door.

***

When Chris next woke, it was of his own volition. Peter was sitting at the small table by the windows, reading the paper and halfway through a leisurely breakfast.

“Why the hell is there only one bed in this room?” Chris demanded.

Ah, there it was. Peter smiled down into his cup. “Good morning to you, too. Coffee?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Chris said, and then froze halfway out of bed when he realized he had no clothes. “No.”

“There’s another robe in the closet,” Peter said mildly.

Chris glared at him and then threw back the duvet defiantly to stalk over to the mirrored door. Peter didn’t look away.

Chris knotted the robe’s belt firmly before taking the seat on the other side of the table.

Peter nodded at the covered plates covering basically the entire rest of the table’s surface. “Help yourself.”

“Where are we?”

“What, after that speech last night about how you could kill me no matter how inebriated, you don’t remember?”

“I said I could fight; I didn’t say I could navigate. They’re extremely disparate skills.”

Peter laughed at that; he couldn’t help it. He reached into the pocket of his robe and pulled out the room key. “Here. I just asked for a non-chain hotel near the airport. No one knows where we are.” Chris looked at him, startled, and Peter shrugged. “I don’t know why you were in that bar last night, but I assume it has something to do with your family. It always does.”

Chris’s expression soured and he looked away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Peter shrugged again and went back to his breakfast. “So don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t. I don’t care. Talk about it, don’t talk about it, you can do whatever you want. Me, I plan to stay in this nice hotel room where I checked in under a false ID for the rest of the weekend, because it amuses me and I find it restful. But feel free to leave whenever you wish, although I suppose you’ll probably want to wait until your clothes come back from the laundry.” He paused, just barely, and then added, “Or you can stay.”

Chris’s eyes flicked to the one bed in the room and then back to Peter.

Peter sat back in his chair and let a slow, lazy smile grow across his face.

A flush began to creep up Chris’s neck, and Peter relented, letting the smile soften into something less predatory. “You look like you could use the rest,” he noted.

For some reason, Chris turned even redder at that.

“Chris,” Peter said, and Chris looked up in shock at both the use of his preferred name and the serious tone. “I have no expectations here. I don’t want anything from you.”

Chris’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why? We’re not friends.”

“No,” Peter acknowledged, because it was nothing but the truth. “But we’re not enemies either, no matter what other people might think. Take the weekend. Be whoever you want to be.”

Chris reached out and ran his fingers over the plastic of the hotel key. “Be whoever I want to be… with you.”

“If that’s what you want.”

There was a distinct glint in Chris’s eyes when he met Peter’s gaze next. “And what about what you want?”

Peter smiled again. “I can think of a few things.”

***

To Chris’s confused amusement, the first things Peter thought of were a bath (for Chris, by himself, with Peter listening to make sure he didn’t fall asleep and drown), a shave (which Peter assisted with when Chris argued he didn’t see the point, and which only got very slightly erotic), another meal (“Are you trying to fatten me up for some nefarious purpose?” “That’s witches, not wolves, and I’m just trying to build your strength.”), and then a nap.

The raised eyebrow Peter leveled at Chris when he started to lie down and then sat back up again to fish no less than five knives and two handguns out from under his pillow wasn’t even surprised. Chris raised an eyebrow back.

“I just don’t understand how you slept on them all night.”

“Not all night. Just after you stole my clothes.”

“Oh, of course. Silly me.”

Chris redistributed his weapons to his satisfaction and then lay down again. Peter indulged himself by running a hand through Chris’s hair, and the pleased sound that elicited almost convinced Peter to change his agenda. But the dark circles still clear under Chris’s eyes, even after a full night of sleep followed by half a day of laziness, had him tugging the duvet up firmly and settling next to Chris to set an example.

He didn’t mean to fall asleep at all, but he sure woke _right_ the hell up when Chris wrapped around him from behind and kissed his neck.

“This can’t be anything more than this weekend, you know,” Chris said quietly into the skin where Peter’s neck met his shoulder.

“I know how to do no strings attached, Christopher,” Peter shot back, and helpfully tilted his head a little farther to the side. “Do you?”

Chris huffed out a bitter little laugh again. “Oh, you have no idea.”

Peter rolled over until Chris was on his back and Peter could return the kissing with interest. “Then I’m glad to see we’re both on the same page here.”

His hands drifted lower and Chris bucked up against him in response. Peter was pretty sure he could have found a way to continue the conversation, but at the scrape of teeth across the edge of his trapezius, he suddenly found better things to think about.

Their clothes arrived back from the laundry at some point in the course of that afternoon, but by then Peter had discovered that Chris always came in near-silence and had become determined to change that, so they never quite found a reason to put them on again for the rest of the weekend.

***

Later, Peter would feel a little stab of vicious pride that he was Chris’s last fling before what they heard through the supernatural grapevine was his arranged marriage to Victoria.

***

Much later, the memory of that weekend would become one of the only ones it was safe for his comatose mind to retreat to, free as it was of any members of his family.

***

**Beacon Hills, now**

They were holding Chris in an abandoned warehouse, because where else would they choose? Honestly, villains in Beacon Hills these days had no sense of style. No class, no creativity.

And no idea who they were dealing with.

Of course, they thought they were dealing with Scott. There was a lot of posturing and talking going on right now, like they thought they were actually going to get to negotiate for whatever they wanted.

That option had been completely off the table for them as soon as they took Chris hostage, as far as Peter was concerned. He glanced to the side and saw Stiles studying the opposing forces with a clinical detachment Peter recognized, and he nodded to himself. Stiles knew these people weren’t walking out of here, too; whatever Peter did now, Stiles would get Scott to see the reasoning behind it. Eventually. Not that Peter particularly cared, but it would make his life that little bit easier.

And thus, that minor worry dealt with, he was free to act as soon as the overall tenor of the room changed. He hadn’t been listening to any of the _words_ of this pointless conversation, of course, but he’d been exquisitely aware of the tones of voice, body language, and positioning of everyone in the room… and Chris, tied to a chair with claws at his throat. He was breathing, Peter could tell that from across the room, but he wasn’t aware, and Peter couldn’t tell what they’d drugged him with from this far away.

He didn’t like it at all.

Scott’s voice took on a conciliatory tone. Stiles and Derek both stiffened, trying to will him not to make stupid concessions the territory couldn’t afford, which is why they didn’t notice the others behind the appointed spokesman moving into position to attack right away.

But Peter did. And he acted.

He’d been in the back, off to the side. The kidnappers had scarcely taken any notice of him, which was just how he liked it, and the satisfaction he felt as he ripped through the two closest to him before they even had time to turn was immense.

An arrow flew past him to take down a third. It seemed the lovely Allison had also been paying attention. Good. He leapt over the toppling body and charged straight for the man still standing over Chris, apparently too stunned by the sudden turn of events to do anything.

“ _Mine_ ,” Peter growled as he yanked the other man off his feet. He didn’t last long.

Peter let his face shift back to normal, but kept his claws out to deal with Chris’s bonds, snarling when he saw the marks that had been left behind by the zip ties. He wiped the blood away from his mouth roughly before he reached out to lift Chris’s chin.

“Christopher.” He shook him just a little and heard Chris’s heart rate pick up a bit. “Christopher, I know you can hear me. Open your eyes.”

Chris groaned and then blinked, stiffening as he registered the sounds of the chaos around them.

“Do you remember where you are?”

“No,” Chris said.

“Well, it’s not like that matters,” Peter said, and handed him a cloth roll full of knives he’d stolen from the Argents’ armory closet when Allison wasn’t paying attention. “You’ve always been quick on the uptake, and I seem to remember something about drugs in your system not being a hindrance.”

Chris had the knives out and was throwing one at something over Peter’s shoulder between one blink and the next. Peter grinned fiercely and turned to rejoin the fray at Chris’s side.

Bare minutes later, it was over, the other pack (if they had even called themselves that) all dead on the warehouse floor and Scott looking like he was about to have a crisis over it. With no one left to fight, Chris stumbled into Peter’s shoulder. Peter caught his weight easily, and then Allison’s as well as she flung herself at her father.

“Dad! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he lied, his free hand coming up to smooth her hair.

She pulled back from the hug slightly to frown at him.

“Well, I will be,” he amended, and she looked at Peter, of all people, for confirmation.

He shrugged, (though carefully, so as not to dislodge Chris). “They didn’t use anything exotic on him. He’s been through this before. He’ll be fine.”

She sighed in relief. “Okay. Good.”

“You might want to spend the night at Lydia’s tonight, though,” Chris said. Allison opened her mouth to object, and Chris cut her off. “It’d make me feel better. I just need to sleep this off.”

“Maybe you should stay the weekend,” Peter said, and they both looked at him in surprise. “I’ll stay with him.”

“Why?” Allison asked with suspicion. And here Peter had thought she was starting to trust him.

“Yeah, why?” Chris echoed.

“You kept it,” Peter said simply.

“Kept what?”

“The hotel key.”

Gray and exhausted as Chris was, he still managed a slight flush. “Oh.”

“Dad?” Allison asked.

Chris pulled her back in and kissed the top of her head. “It’s fine, honey. We’ve just got some stuff to talk about. But don’t worry. Peter will take care of me.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Chris shot Peter a look and the barest ghost of a smile. “He’s done it before.”

Peter didn’t carry Chris out of the warehouse princess-style, but mostly only because he knew Chris valued his dignity.

That definitely didn’t prevent him from kissing Chris once they got outside, though. Chris returned it with all the energy he had left.

“Should I check us into another hotel?” Peter murmured, half-teasing.

Chris shook his head. “Not necessary. You’re coming home with me, and I already have the only key we need.”

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am on the [Tumblr](https://rhysiana.tumblr.com/).


End file.
